Archive for March, 2015

Preparation
Get a big food processor. A stick blender will work, but a big sturdy strong food processor that can work uninterrupted for a few minutes is better.

A cup of chickpeas

Get small chickpeas. (Big ones work, too, but the smaller they are, the softer they get, and it’s important.)
Wash with flowing water, and remove bad ones (black, stale, etc.)

Chickpeas in water

Put chickpeas in water for at least 24 hours. Keep them in a refrigerator. Change the water every six hours or so. I usually have them in the water for two or three days. They will increase twice or more in size during this time, so use a large receptacle.

Peeling

Optionally, you may peel your chickpeas. It may make the final paste slightly smoother, but it’s very time-consuming.

Peeled vs unpeeled chickpeas

Boiling
Boil the chickpeas in a pot on a small stove until they are soft. “Soft” means that you can crush them with your fingers or teeth as easily as a boiled green pea. This may take a few hours, depending on weather, water quality, type of pot, fire intensity, and of course the chickpeas themselves. Usually it takes me somewhere between two and four hours. I begin in the morning and it’s ready by lunch time. (Arabs frequently do it overnight and have it as breakfast.)

I’ve been told that using a pressure cooker can shorten the time a lot, but I never tried it. But covering the pot while boiling is certainly a good idea.

Mixing

For one cup of chickpeas you’ll need:

Salt, cumin, pepper, olive oil, tahini, lemon, garlic

Half a cup or more of tahini. Try to get something produced in Israel or an Arab country – Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt. In Israel, Tahini from Nablus is very highly regarded. Uzbek or Turkish tahini may be OK, but I’m not sure. Get raw tahini: it should have nothing but sesame in the ingredients (and maybe oil, but even that is unnecessary). Don’t use “tahini salads”, “seasoned tahini”, or “tahini spreads” if they have anything except sesame.

Half a cup of olive oil.

Fresh cold water. Some people use the water in which the chickpeas were boiled, and it’s OK, but fresh cold water gives the final product brighter color. For the amount see below.

Squeezed lemon juice. Half a lemon may be enough, but it can go up to a whole lemon or even more if you like it.

A clove of garlic. Some people don’t use it – a matter of taste.

A pinch of cumin. Just a tiny little pinch – it gives enough taste. Too much of it won’t ruin the taste, but will darken the color.

Salt and black pepper to taste. Small pinches should be enough.

Put the garlic, the cumin and a couple of spoons of chickpeas (without water) in the food processor and grind for about a minute. Add olive oil, lemon juice, and a bit of tahini. Grind for a minute more. Check the consistency. It will still be far from the final product, but should start looking like a paste.

Let’s start!!!

Add a quarter of a cup of water and grind a bit more. From here on, keep adding chickpeas, tahini, water, salt and pepper. Be especially careful with water – too much of it will make the whole thing too liquid, so add it little by little until the consistency looks beautiful and tastes well. Adding a lot of tahini is usually a good thing, but also depends on your taste.

Adding tahini and pepper

It may be a good idea not to grind all the chickpeas, but to keep some boiled ones and add them as a topping. In fact, many hummus restaurants serve plates of hummus with lots of non-ground chickpeas in the middle, but do make sure that they are very soft.

Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind!

Serving

Most commonly, it’s spread on a plate and “wiped” with a pita, but knock yourself out and serve it any way that is tasty to you :)

Very often it is spread on the plate using a spoon in a few rounds so that most of it is close to the edges and the middle of the plate is mostly empty and filled with additions, such as:

Boiled soft chickpeas

Fried mushrooms

Fava beans

Hard-boiled egg

Baked eggplant

The universal toppings are a bit of olive oil, black pepper, paprika and turmeric.

Another version – with fried mushrooms and the chickpeas mixed in

Variations

A lot of people suggest adding a spoon of baking soda while boiling. They say that it makes the chickpeas softer. I tried it a few times, and it doesn’t hurt, but not really necessary either.

It’s OK to cheat by buying a can of preserved whole chickpeas if they are sold in your area. They are already soft, so you only need to boil them for a few minutes. It saves you a lot of time and the taste is fine.

The first ten or so times that I tried to do it, it was very far from brilliant. It can take years to become good at it. Don’t let it discourage you :)